


The Taste of Summer

by dirtylittlegreasemonkey



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, M/M, Picnic, Summer of Love - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 18:49:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7399438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtylittlegreasemonkey/pseuds/dirtylittlegreasemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a boring July day at the scrapyard Robert arrives with luxury hampers given to him free by a client. He persuades Aaron to go for a picnic, where they spend some much needed alone time and indulge in the summer heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Robron Summer of Love project!

He was wearing a navy t-shirt - the kind you could pick up for a tenner in Primark, but this particular one probably came with a Hugo Boss label under the collar – and no jacket. Under the round sleeves his exposed arms, which were carrying a picnic hamper in each, had the pink of an afternoon’s attempt at sunbathing and cinnamon coloured freckles rising to the surface to say hello. The swung-open door of the portacabin brought with it a warm rush of air.

Aaron looked up from his phone. Business was unsurprisingly slow for an overcooked day in July. Adam had just been suggesting ordering a pizza – such was the sluggish mood of the afternoon – but Aaron wasn’t sure he could face the heavy load of cheese and had only grunted against the prospect. The sight of Robert, with browner strands of hair on his hot temples, was a welcome distraction and he stretched upwards in his chair like he was arching through a yawn.

“Alright?” Robert said to the both of them, although his look was characteristically exclusive in its direction. He placed one picnic hamper on the desk and kept the second by his side. The opening of both baskets had cellophane casings and a gingham bow on the handle. They looked like Robert had prised them from a shop window display and gotten away with the theft with a dimple-flecked smile when leaving. It wouldn’t be a complete surprise.

“What are they?” Aaron asked with a nod. He swivelled the chair round and his gaze diverted from curiosity when he saw Robert running a free hand through the damp sides of his hair. It stuck up in a right angle now like he’d put his hands on an electrified fence. It made Aaron smile. Internally.

“Freebies,” Robert said. “Deacon and Brown gave them to Home James as a thanks for getting them out of a sticky situation last week. Two luxury hampers. All local produce. The works.”

“Nice one,” Adam said, extracting himself from his seat to take a look for himself. “What is this, then? Company picnic?” He had his hands between the cellophane folds of the hamper on Aaron’s desk, trying to get a closer look at the items inside.

“Actually,” Robert said, hand gripping the handle of the hamper to his side and glancing at Aaron. “I was thinking more along the lines of romantic picnic for two.” He let his eyes sweep the length of Aaron’s body, which Aaron felt with equal heat from the attraction and the exposure. He still wasn’t completely comfortable with this habit Robert fell into of flirting at work. It wasn’t unwelcome or unpleasant, just gave him a teenage surge of awkwardness if Adam was around to watch and mock him for it afterwards.

“That’s really kind of you mate,” Adam said, tongue wedging between his teeth. He leant across the desk to put his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “We’ll try not to miss you too much, eh?”

Adam was in creases before Aaron was and Robert’s eye roll lasted just long enough that Adam conceded and clapped him on the arm.

“I’m not going to stand in the way of love’s young dream, am I now?” he said.

“What d’you say?” Robert said, looking again at Aaron. “Don’t tell me you’ve got too much on because I know you haven’t. And I’ve thought ahead – I’ve got bottles of cider in the car.”

“Ooh, bottles! He’s a keeper,” Adam said, raising his eyebrows at Aaron and laughing. “Too good for swigging on a can of Strongbow in the park, are we lad? He’s changed ya!”

“Shut up.” Aaron looked up at Robert and gave his shoulders a nudge of agreement. “Yeah, alright.”

“Great!” Robert said.

“So I’m supposed to hold the fort for you two for the rest of the day, am I? _Again?_ ” The second remark was said to Aaron alone.

Aaron coloured. Last week’s incident hadn’t been planned. It had just been a series of very effective texts – a barrage it could be said – which escalated very quickly. It wasn’t entirely due to Robert’s ability to compose pornographic messages (no, in truth some of them had had the opposite effect and had made Aaron laugh at the ridiculousness). It was mostly due to them having both woken up with an unquenchable need for hands and mouths on every available scrap of skin. And then looking at the time and realising they’d slept in. And _fuck_ and _shit_ they both had meetings. The need for sex screamed out of every pore but it was cruelly denied. Aaron’s mood became unbearable; Robert sulked. And then in the afternoon, forty minutes after Aaron and Adam had come back from a pub lunch, Aaron told Adam he was going to have to go. He didn’t want to lie and worry Adam by saying it was a family emergency, but he blamed the early exit on Liv. The plan was fool proof – or - would have been had he not left his phone behind and Adam quite clearly and painfully saw the scarring photo message from Robert captioned with: _Ready and waiting_. Aaron was forced into agreeing to buy Adam’s pints for a month. He said he’d need therapy. Apparently the atmosphere over breakfast at Keeper’s Cottage was excruciating, on Adam’s behalf anyway. Robert was clueless to the fact his brother in law had seen _everything_. But it had been worth it for Aaron. They’d done it in one of the estate barns. For old time’s sake. Mapping Robert’s sheened skin on hessian sacks. Having his throat licked. Coming. Twice. Lungs full of the woody scent of hay. The pub was far too crowded these days for the sounds they inevitably found themselves giving into.

Robert tapped the top of the spare picnic hamper, bringing Aaron back into the present.

“Take this home and share it with Vic. Anything to shut you up and get you out of the way,” Robert said to Adam.

“And here was me thinking you actually cared,” Adam said.  

“And here was _me_ thinking you might give us some time alone one of these days.”

“Robert-” Aaron said, the incident of last week playing all too clearly in his head. Adam had been drunk a few days on from the text message incident – from pints Aaron had coughed up for – slurring and unthinkingly talkative. He’d been staggering back to the cottage, kept upright by dragging his arm around Aaron’s shoulders and stared off somewhere into the distance until he started making gestures with his hands.

“No, no, no. Right? Man to man…photos can lie right? But I mean, really, and you don’t have to tell me, like. I understand. Man to man. But you know when you think _this_ is average and then…you think...Is it good lighting? Out of focus, or….Does he have a filter that makes it look….Or is it just...?”

“Are you really talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

Adam was stumbling, holding out his hands and measuring the space in between. Then he stopped to be sick in the bushes outside Beauty and Bernice and the whole conversation about Robert’s dick was forgotten about. 

“Come on then,” Robert said, lifting the basket and nodding his head out the door.

Aaron removed his hi-vis and told Adam he’d see him tomorrow, before heading outside where he could hear Robert revving the engine. Robert sat in the driver’s seat, arm slung over the wheel, face the true meaning of sunshine.

*

“What’s wrong?” Robert asked, his lips glossy from the apple he’d been tearing into with his teeth.

“Nothing,” Aaron said, squinting and then gesturing at Robert’s bare skin with his finger. “Your arm’s getting red.”

Robert looked down at his arm, the one that was most exposed to the blaze of the afternoon sun. He rubbed his hand over it like he was dusting off the sunburn. “It’s alright,” he said.

“You brought a picnic blanket, cider and –“ Aaron gave him a pointed look, “other things. But no suncream. Did your mother teach you nothing?”

When they’d parked up (down a tractor road, into a private field off the Hotten Road which was sheltered by a wall of trees and had signage which said _No Unauthorised Access_ ) Aaron offered to unload the boot, removing the blanket, six bottles of cider and a washbag which very obviously contained condoms and lube.

“Not a chance,” Aaron had said.

“In case of emergencies,” Robert said, giving him that sleepy lidded blink which meant he ended up taking it with them anyway, even if he said point blank he wouldn’t be having sex in some farmer’s field no matter how much cider and luxury food Robert had seduced him with.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t done it in a field before,” Robert had said, leaning on the roof of the car, hand in his pocket and pelvis so obviously pointed. “’Cos, you know, I seem to have this very graphic memory of-”

Aaron tossed him the blanket from over his shoulder as he walked away. “ _Again_ ,” he clarified. “I’m not doing it _again_.”

Stretched out long and slim on the blanket, Robert took another bite of his apple and smiled. “Look, mum would have been proud I came prepared. Alright?”

Aaron rolled up his hoodie, which until then had been balled at his side, and made a pillow of it to lay his head against. Robert’s pinkish arm was propped up beside him and cast a shadow over his chest. Looking up at Robert against the seamless blue sky gave Aaron a comfort he couldn’t describe if asked. He was pleasantly fuzzed with drink and a little heavy with food but overhead the birds tweeted in chorus and the traffic off the main road was only a static white noise. This was the happiest he’d been in a long time.

“Do you miss her?” Aaron asked, watching as Robert leant back into the hamper to dig through their last uneaten items. There were things in there they’d both turned their noses up at. Caviar, peach and rose macarons, feta filo parcels. The scotch eggs, the triangle-cut sandwiches, the sausage rolls – they’d long been demolished, along with the jammy slices of Victoria sponge.

“Why d’you ask?” Robert said, unloading a punnet of strawberries from the bottom of the basket.

“You never really talk about her,” Aaron said, watching the stillness of Robert’s shoulder blades.

“I try not to think about it, I suppose,” he said. He turned back, drawing up one of his knees to his chest. “I mean, I do. I do think about them – both of them – all the time. I wonder what they might say or think about me. Whether they’d be proud. That sort of thing.”

Aaron reached out, running his stretched fingers against the skin above Robert’s elbow.

“In a way it’s easier,” Robert said. “They can’t be disappointed in me. They only got to see the first few years of _Robert Sugden’s Massive Mistakes_.” He made the comment sound exaggerated, announced like a TV show, but there was a weight in the air when he finished speaking.

They exchanged the soft smiles of people who knew all the wounds of the past and just how deeply they were felt.

“I suppose,” Robert said, his voice peppered with humour. “I’ve still got Diane to give me the look. And Chas.”

Aaron grinned, squeezing Robert’s arm.

He shook his head when Robert offered him the container of strawberries.

“I’m stuffed,” Aaron said.

Robert tutted, prising out a large one from the middle of the punnet.

“I don’t even get to feed you, then?” He said, dangling it in the air. He had that warm and slippery quality to his voice. The sweet combination of too much fresh air and enough drink to relax him. The hamper had contained two miniature bottles of wine which were their first port of call. They chinked plastic, swigged, grimaced and leaned into a sour grape kiss.

“No,” Aaron said. “Because we’re not in some girlie film, are we?”

Robert took a bite out of the strawberry, licking away its juice and leaving the remainder of the fruit on the paper plate – something that had been handily provided in the hamper. He leant on the arm nearest to Aaron and hovered over him.

“What about this?” he said, his voice a dark, whispery quiet that made Aaron feel like he was floating. Robert’s body blocked out the light. His lips almost kissed the air between them. “Is this allowed?”

“It’s allowed,” Aaron said, unmoving, letting Robert kiss him. His mouth sweet and wet. He even let Robert’s hand sneak up and under his t-shirt because all he was doing at that moment in time was thumbing the skin in uneven circles and it was irresistible.

When Robert leaned back, out of the kiss, he kept up the pattern, making mazes of his thumb on Aaron’s torso. Robert’s cheeks were a flushed red, looking the picture of innocence against his sun-streaked blond hair. He puffed air up to his face, complaining of being hot.

“It’s summer, what did you expect?”

At Aaron’s sarcasm, Robert slipped his hand away and decided to remove his own t-shirt, slinging it at Aaron’s face. He protested, laughing as he threw it back at him.

“Gross.”

“I’m trying to give you the rom-com experience here.”

“What? By throwing your sweaty t-shirt in my face?”

“No,” Robert said, gesturing down his body. “This!”

Aaron tilted his head to the side, making a little noise through gritted teeth. “The blokes are normally a bit more ripped and a bit less pasty, aren’t they?”

Not wanting to hurt Robert’s ego too much, Aaron sat up, running his hands along the smooth length of Robert’s biceps and pushed his mouth against him. Robert took full advantage of Aaron’s move and used the loose neck of Aaron’s t-shirt to pull him on top until they were horizontal and kissing on top of the picnic blanket. Robert’s hands graced the small of Aaron’s back and Aaron used this slightly ticklish momentum, to prise himself away and straddle Robert’s lap. With the flicker of a white cabbage butterfly out of the corner of his eye, Aaron bent down and kissed the pink flush of skin on Robert’s bare chest, running his tongue between a dotted pool of freckles. Robert’s arms spread like wings on the blanket in a display of surrender as Aaron’s mouth moved towards his nipples, left and then right.

Aaron wasn’t beyond games of his own and he’d been well aware that the fidgety little movements he made had far bigger consequences to Robert’s arousal, but once he’d finished kissing Robert’s chest and the fleshier path towards his belt buckle, he’d climbed off him and laid next to him instead. He rolled his head to the side so that the scratchy material of the blanket roughed up against his face and closed his eyes. The orange glow under his eyelids got darker as Robert moved in. First there was the unmistakable sound of Robert’s belt being loosened and then his mouth opened against the bristly underside of Aaron’s jaw. Aaron could hear his wet panting getting louder as the kissing soared towards his ear.   

He made a scoffing little half moan, retreating up into a curled position and laying a hand on Robert’s shoulder. It wasn’t to stop him, it was far too tender if that had ever been the intention. But if Aaron’s head eased to the side, if the exposure of throat and the brief parting and wetting of his lips was anything to go by, Aaron wanted him to carry on. Robert’s belt made the sweet familiar jangle and with it, a prickle of shivers coursed up Aaron’s spine.

“What are you doing?” Aaron said, the words pressed down by weary laughter.

Robert pulled his jeans down past his hips and lowered his mouth again to Aaron’s ear lobe and pinched it between his teeth. “What do you think?” He kneed Aaron’s legs apart and sat astride him.

“You know, there’s a perfectly good _bed_ at mine. Or yours for that matter,” Aaron said. “And don’t use all this,” - Aaron pointed to the decimated hamper spread – “as some sort of blackmail. A few scotch eggs isn’t a gateway to this, y’know.” He looked down between his legs and Robert’s hand shot straight to his crotch, rubbing his palm across Aaron’s erection with the smugness only Robert could get away with.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Robert said, his tongue teasing between his lips and squeezed at Aaron’s middle.

He squirmed on the rug, pushing his hands away. “Is this some weird fantasy of yours, ‘cos you were born on a farm?”

“My fantasy? And you don’t have a thing about the backseats of cars?” Robert ran the tips of his fingers down the centre of Aaron’s body like the slow path of drizzle on a window pane.

Aaron scoffed. “It was the only time I got you alone.” There was a moment where he felt the sadness of the past catch up with him. The fleeting, steamed up encounters in a parked car. The rushed separation. The phone calls home to Chrissie telling her he was just on his way. He’d tell her that he loved her and then wipe Aaron’s taste from his mouth. And then he’d end the call like it was nothing, dive back into kissing Aaron, breathy unwinding kisses between telling him about a hotel he’d seen. Telling him what he’d do to him on their pristine sheets.

Robert must have seen a switch, a fragment of pain in Aaron’s face, because he laid his palm across Aaron’s heart and then held his cheek.

“I’m all yours.” The edge of a smile slid into the corner of his mouth. “Although I won’t say no if you fancy a drive somewhere.” His eyebrows lifted.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“So you keep telling me,” Robert said. “But I’m also,” – he kissed Aaron’s neck again – “completely,” – and again – “irresistible.”

Robert rested back on his haunches, hands on his thighs. His jaw was speckled red from Aaron’s stubble and above it, a smile of a man who already knew he’d won. He pushed his thumbs into his underwear, edging it down past the line of pubic hair, eyeing Aaron like a naughty teenager.

“Robert!” Aaron hissed between his teeth. “What if someone sees?” It was bad enough that the two of them were alone on private land, Robert with his top off and both of them fooling around, never mind anything more.

“So? What’s some boring old farmer gonna do?”

“Call the police?”   

Robert ignored Aaron’s panic and was now between Aaron’s legs, jeans and boxers pulled to his knees, his cock hardening with the thrill of their location. He leaned over Aaron, kissing the side of his jaw and using his free hand to unbutton Aaron’s fly.

“I’m not suggesting we re-enact every position from last night, Aaron,” Robert said, taking them both blissfully back to the previous night’s activities if only for a second. How had they kept so quiet for so long? “Just a quick one.”

Aaron’s eyes slipped closed and his fingers flinched and stretched out on the rug beside him. He could hear Robert’s heavy breathing. He remembered the dark closeness of the previous night, their sweat clung bodies, Robert gripping the bedsheet in his teeth and saying _I promise you,_ laughing, _I’ll be quiet._ There had been a summer storm outside, thunder waking them, lightning keeping them alert, bleaching their naked bodies in silvery light. Aaron had hoped no one in the pub could hear them – the loud cry of pleasure that had slipped out, or the desperate sounds of Robert’s hunger which came in one-word commands and affirmatives. The rain lashed against the windows, drowning out their feverish summer night.    

On the rug, Aaron’s fingers reached out and touched the head of Robert’s cock and felt the whole weight of him, stretched over him, stiffen. Aaron heard the satisfied rush of _Oh yes_ leave Robert’s mouth and then he was burying between layers of Aaron’s clothes to access his cock too.

“This is such a stupid idea,” Aaron said, lifting his hips for Robert to slide his clothes down. Robert made a mmm-hmming laugh sound, deep in his throat and flicked the tips of their noses together, dipping his mouth low enough so that Aaron could pull at his bottom lip with intent.

“You love me.” Robert grinned, stroking his thumb along the side of Aaron’s cock.

“Yep,” Aaron said, the cloudless sky looping as he rolled his eyes at Robert’s arrogance.

“Say it then.” Robert pulled his fist down Aaron’s shaft all too slowly.

Aaron held his breath like a clamp around his lungs, his senses and self-consciousness drowned by the warm pressure exerted by Robert’s hand.

“I love you.”

“Good.” Robert pressed his mouth on Aaron’s and then moved them both so they were on their sides, facing each other and partly shaded in each other’s shadow. Aaron could feel his uneven breaths pushing against Robert’s cheek in the anticipation of it all.

There were many things Robert excelled at, one was his focus. Work, money, sex, love. If he was in the moment nothing could distract him. Aaron found his determination attractive. It was in Robert’s eyes right then, the soft-focus green, like a sun-dipped blade of grass. His concentration. Aaron couldn’t help but watch him as Robert touched him. His lips were parted, wet and red, as his strokes gained an intense dedication. The alternating pressure was maddening. Just as Aaron felt like he had a hold on Robert’s rhythm, had moved his breath in time to the escalating force, Robert switched pace and temperature. His large hand scuffed the length in a speed that neared a blur. Then he teased, bluffed his way around the head of Aaron’s cock, denying him anything but whisper light suggestions of his forefinger over the slit. With a wicked smile, Robert lifted his hand away and planted a soft smack to Aaron’s backside and then returned to pump at his cock, leaving Aaron’s insides bending and curling. He bucked into Robert’s hand, leaving white finger prints in Robert’s bare shoulder and going out of focus. His body arched as if in worship to the sun and heard the laboured breaths of Robert urging him on.

His voice was dark and damp in Aaron’s ear. “You sure I can’t fuck you?”

That was all it took for Aaron to come. The suggestive heat of Robert’s voice writhing inside of him. He lay, damp, and skin convulsing while Robert continued to play with the thickness of Aaron’s softening cock against his own, unattended-to length. Robert wiped his hand on the rug and then flattened on his back, hands propped behind his head. His head flopped to the side to look at Aaron and Aaron looked back, unable to suppress the squinting grin he gave.

Aaron wet his bottom lip and laughed. He sat up, making himself half decent, and knelt over Robert. He ran his hands down the sides of Robert’s body and the shiver he gave made Aaron’s blood rush. He hadn’t felt this young and free, ever. Robert reached over and used the bunched up clothes as a pillow under his head. He liked to watch; he always liked to watch.

Aaron put his hands on Robert’s thighs.

“D’you know how tempting it is to leave you here like this?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Do you really wanna be testing that theory right now?” Aaron lowered one of his hands, thumbing Robert’s balls.

Robert groaned, his chest rising with a sharp inhale as he watched Aaron’s head descend. “I’ll shut up,” he said.

“Oh!” Aaron said, extending his tongue so the tip of it criss-crossed the head of Robert’s cock. “You’re learning.” 

*

The picnic hamper was now packed with all the empty packaging and the food they didn’t want. Robert had suggested climbing the fence into the next field and finding some poor unsuspecting animal to give it to, but Aaron said that sounded far too energetic.

The sun was grazing the corn fields in the distance. They’d been on this picnic for hours and Aaron found his head leaning on Robert’s shoulder as they laid there watching the growing clouds turn a soft, sun blushed yellow. Robert had his shirt back on, the faint traces of goosebumps raising on his arms. His phone had rung a few times when they were dozy in their post-coital haze, but he’d flipped it onto silence and tossed it to the other side of the blanket. Those days of hurrying back to Chrissie were long gone.

“We could get a tent sometime, you know – watch the stars,” Robert said.

“Why?”

Robert’s hand crept to Aaron’s side, walking across his ribs. “I hear it’s romantic.”

“And which of your many conquests told you that?”

“Ha ha,” Robert said. “I’m serious.”

“I know, and that’s what worries me.” Aaron lifted his head from Robert’s shoulder to look at him. He looked like the sort of man you could fall in love with five times a day. Sometimes he did. “The last thing I thought I’d be doing with you was some sorta rom-com bucket list.”

He smirked. “That’s not what this is.”

“You don’t have a checklist that you use on all the girls and…guys?” Aaron said, the hesitance hanging on his last word. A conversation for another day.

“No,” he said, a short laugh making his dimples dent his cheeks further.

“But you’ve done this before.”

“Well yeah. When I was a kid. And it didn’t involve any of what we just did,” he said. He put his arm around Aaron, looking at him directly even if Aaron’s gaze had now sloped away. “I did this because I love you. And I wanted to spend time alone with you. Because I wanted to. Tell me what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Aaron said, his shrug blunted by his position against Robert’s body. “It’s just so…normal.”

Robert stroked the back of Aaron’s neck with the edge of his finger and smiled, touching a kiss to his forehead. “Aaron Dingle being _normal_ and _happy_ , who’d have thought it?”

  

 

  


End file.
